Royal Canadian Mounted Police

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP or Mounties; French, Gendarmerie royale du Canada, GRC) is both the federal police force and the national police of Canada. The RCMP provides federal (national) police services. It also provides, under contract, provincial and municipal police services to Canada's three territories and eight of its provinces. Most of Canada's provinces, while constitutionally responsible for law and order, prefer to sub-contract policing to this professional national force that consequently operates under their direction in regard to provincial and municipal law enforcement. The exceptions are Ontario, Quebec, and parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, which have their own provincial police forces. The RCMP is the largest police force in Canada; as of April 2005, the RCMP had an on-strength establishment of 22,557 personnel{{fn|1}}.

The RCMP in popular culture

The Mounties have been immortalized as symbols of Canadian culture in numerous Hollywood movies, which often feature the image of the Mountie as square-jawed, stoic, and polite, and with the motto that the Mountie "always gets his man." (In actual fact, the RCMP's motto is Maintiens le droit, French for "Uphold the Law". The Hollywood motto dervies from a comment by the Montana newspaper, the Fort Benton Record: "They fetch their man every time." {{fn|4}}.) A famous example is the radio and television series, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon. Dudley Do-Right (of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show) is a 1960s example of the comic aspect of the Mountie myth. The Broadway musical and Hollywood movie Rose Marie is a 1930s example of its romantic side. Canadians also poke fun at the RCMP with Sergeant Renfrew and his faithful dog Cuddles in various sketches produced by the Royal Canadian Air Farce comedy troupe. The British have also exploited the myth: the BBC television series Monty Python's Flying Circus featured a group of mounties singing the chorus in The Lumberjack Song in the famous lumberjack sketch. Ren and Stimpy also parodied the Mounties in the episode Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen. More recently, the 1994-98 TV series Due South paired a Mountie with a streetwise American detective cleaning up the streets of Chicago, Illinois, mainly deriving its entertainment from the perceived differences in attitude between these two countries' police forces.

Related Topics:
Canadian culture - Hollywood - Movie - French - Radio - Television series - Sergeant Preston of the Yukon - Dudley Do-Right - The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show - Broadway - Sergeant Renfrew - Royal Canadian Air Farce - BBC - Monty Python's Flying Circus - The Lumberjack Song - Lumberjack - Ren and Stimpy - Due South - Chicago, Illinois

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